July 15, 2019: "The System" Versus Guatemalan Democracy

Guatemala has seen a historic democratic opening get abruptly shut down, amid official U.S. silence. Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, director of the Guatemalan online news outlet Nómada, talks about how corrupt elites stifled a "justice revolution," and the consequences of the August presidential election runoff.

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Guatemala has seen a historic democratic opening get abruptly shut down, amid official U.S. silence. Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, director of the Guatemalan online news outlet Nómada, talks about how corrupt elites stifled a "justice revolution," and the consequences of the August presidential election runoff.

Julio Martínez of Nicaragua's Articulación de Movimientos Sociales talks about the effort to stop human rights abuses and restore democracy in Nicaragua, the importance of international pressure, and the spread of authoritarianism in Central America.

Facing arrest in a corruption scandal, Peru's two-time president Alan García shot himself to death on April 17. WOLA Senior Fellows Jo-Marie Burt and Coletta Youngers discuss the personal journey of a politician who loomed over Peruvian political life for the past 35 years

Garcia started out as a leftist, ruled amid some serious human rights crimes and economic crises, and later became a seemingly untouchable power broker—until the Odebrecht corruption investigation.

Burt and Youngers explain Peru's current judicial drive against corruption, reasons for hope, and the difficulty of predicting anything in Peruvian politics.

The Trump administration has gone full hard-line against Cuba, announcing severe new measures—including a once-unthinkable authority to allow owners of seized Cuban property to sue in U.S. courts.

WOLA's vice president for programs, Geoff Thale, explains why these new punishments and restrictions won't bring "regime change" to the island, and instead how they will hurt its struggling private sector. He and host Adam Isacson look at the politics underlying these steps, and whether they're likely to be long-lasting.

Ana Arjona of Colombia·s Universidad de Los Andes and Northwestern University presents an intricate theory of how armed conflicts work at the local level, as presented in her 2016 book Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War.

Arjona finds that much of the time, it’s not all anarchy and chaos: there can be some sort of order in the midst of civil war. And that order usually takes one of two forms, and the civilian population has a lot to do with what form it takes.

Only a few years ago, Guatemala was making historic gains in its fight against corruption and human rights abuse. Since then, the country has suffered a severe backlash. A “pact of the corrupt” in Guatemala’s ruling elite keeps pushing legislation that would terminate trials and investigations for war crimes and corruption. A U.S.-backed UN prosecutorial body, the CICIG, has been weakened. High-court rulings are being ignored. Things have gotten so bad that the U.S. government has suspended military aid.

And today, Guatemala has incredibly surpassed Mexico as the number-one nationality of undocumented migrants being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.

As a new presidential election looms, Adam talks about the situation with WOLA Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt, just returned from one of her frequent visits to the country. See more of Jo-Marie’s recent analysis at:

El Salvador is inaugurating a new president amid a severe security crisis. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans are abandoning their homes each year—most displacing internally and many moving to other countries—due to gang violence. Despite incipient recent reform efforts, government institutions have been either too absent or too corrupt to protect people.

This podcast features Cristian Schlick, a lawyer with the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University ([[IDHUCA]]) in El Salvador. He will be speaking at [[an event on “Violence and Hardline Citizen Security in El Salvador,”]] hosted by WOLA and the Due Process of Law Foundation, this Thursday March 14 at 4:30PM.

U.S. and Mexican border communities are contending with a surge of asylum-seeking children and parents, arriving by the thousands each day. The Trump administration portrays it as a “national emergency” and is sending troops, turning asylum-seekers away, and circumventing Congress to build walls.

Adam Isacson (WOLA’s Director for Defense Oversight) and Maureen Meyer (WOLA’s Director for Mexico and Migration) discuss why the crisis is happening, and the Trump administration’s cruel efforts to “deter” migrants. Adam talks about what he’s seen over two weeks in San Diego and Tijuana so far this year. Then both outline a vision of what the process for asylum-seekers would look like if the U.S. and Mexican governments adjusted from a “security emergency” to a “humanitarian crisis” response.

Resources cited in the podcast include:

WOLA’s graphical overview of the February migrant data, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection released on March 5. A December 2018 “snapshot” report, and February 2019 update, detailing current asylum waitlists at ports of entry across the U.S.-Mexico border, by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego, and the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute. WOLA’s Central America Monitor, which tracks U.S. aid to the region and evaluates its progress. WOLA’s new Asylum Resources for Attorneys, compiled with the Temple University Beasley School of Law to provide resources for lawyers representing Central American asylum seekers.

A fast-moving, wide-ranging discussion of the current moment in Venezuela, and the available options for finding a way out of the country's intractable crisis, with Geoff Ramsey, WOLA·s assistant director for Venezuela.

The Democratic Party won a majority of the House of Representatives in the November 6 midterm election. Adam Isacson talks with WOLA's Director for Cuba, Marguerite Jiménez, about what this means. They explain what an opposition party can do when it has majority control of a chamber. They identify some of the Democratic members of Congress who will play key roles in determining U.S. policy toward the region. They look at how oversight of diplomacy and security policy might improve. And they assess the likelihood of changes to Cuba policy, border security policy, and U.S. assistance programs.

After a long year of elections in Latin America, Adam talks to Cynthia McClintock of George Washington University, author of a new book that argues for the importance of holding runoff elections, which has brought more democratic outcomes in the region.

A "caravan" of migrants from Central America has inspired the president to threaten aid cuts and to send troops to the border. But this issue involves conditions in Central America, along the migrant trail in Mexico, and U.S. assistance.

WOLA's Adam Isacson, Maureen Meyer, and Adeline Hite were at the Arizona-Mexico border last week amid the furor over the Trump administration's zero-tolerance and family separation policies. They discuss what they saw and what asylum-seekers are facing.

Following travel to Venezuela's border regions, Assistant Director for Venezuela Geoff Ramsey and Director for the Andes Gimena Sánchez discuss the ongoing crisis of forced migration of Venezuelans, what is being done about it, and what needs to happen.

The U.S. government finally has a budget for 2018. Congress almost completely rejected President Trump’s border wall proposal, and reversed his deep cuts in aid to Latin America. Adam Isacson, Maureen Meyer, and Geoff Thale discuss what happened.

El Salvador's National Civilian Police, especially a 1,000-man military-police hybrid unit, has killed hundreds of alleged gang members this year. Many appear to be extrajudicial executions. Demands to do something about the country's brutal gangs has created a climate in which top officials have green-lighted a culture of human rights abuse. Two Salvadoran journalists, Hector Silva of Fáctum and José Luis Sanz of El Faro, have broken the most important stories about police death-squad activity. Here, they discuss their findings and the difficulty of doing this work in El Salvador today.

We've worked with Congress for 43 years, but we're still figuring it out. WOLA Associate Ana Sorrentino has worked both as an advocate and a congressional staffer. She has lots of advice about developing relationships and not wasting busy staffers' time.

The House Appropriations Committee just passed a budget bill that gives the Trump administration much of what it is asking for: more border wall, more agents, and more deportations. Get an update from senior Associates Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer.

On June 20, 2017 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ceased to be an armed group. But as WOLA's Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli makes clear, the hard part awaits.

In a wide-ranging discussion about the current moment, we discuss next steps in the FARC demobilization, the ominous appearance of armed groups in zones of previous guerrilla influence, recent social protests on the Pacific Coast, Colombia's ability to implement its accord commitments, civil society's role in making it happen, and our growing concerns about where the Trump administration is headed.

Over 65 Venezuelans have died in over two months of protests against the Maduro government's authoritarian turn. WOLA Senior Fellow David Smilde, the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University and moderator of the WOLA Venezuela Politics and Human Rights blog, discusses Venezuela's political crisis.

This fast-moving interview covers the risk to democracy posed by Maduro's proposed constitutional assembly; the opposition's strategic opportunities, challenges, and mistakes; civil-military relations; the highly politicized issue of humanitarian aid; diplomatic efforts at the Organization of American States; the issue of sanctions, and WOLA's skepticism about this tactic; and hope for multilateral action to find a way forward.